72 research outputs found
Quality of Experience monitoring and management strategies for future smart networks
One of the major driving forces of the service and network's provider market is the user's perceived service quality and expectations, which are referred to as user's Quality of Experience (QoE). It is evident that QoE is particularly critical for network providers, who are challenged with the multimedia engineering problems (e.g. processing, compression) typical of traditional networks. They need to have the right QoE monitoring and management mechanisms to have a significant impact on their budget (e.g. by reducing the users‘ churn). Moreover, due to the rapid growth of mobile networks and multimedia services, it is crucial for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to accurately monitor and manage the QoE for the delivered services and at the same time keep the computational resources and the power consumption at low levels. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the issue of QoE monitoring and management for future networks. This research, developed during the PhD programme, aims to describe the State-of-the-Art and the concept of Virtual Probes (vProbes). Then, I proposed a QoE monitoring and management solution, two Agent-based solutions for QoE monitoring in LTE-Advanced networks, a QoE monitoring solution for multimedia services in 5G networks and an SDN-based approach for QoE management of multimedia services
Challenges of future multimedia QoE monitoring for internet service providers
The ever-increasing network traffic and user expectations at reduced cost make the delivery of high Quality of Experience (QoE) for multimedia services more vital than ever in the eyes of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Real-time quality monitoring, with a focus on the user, has become essential as the first step in cost-effective provisioning of high quality services. With the recent changes in the perception of user privacy, the rising level of application-layer encryption and the introduction and deployment of virtualized networks, QoE monitoring solutions need to be adapted to the fast changing Internet landscape. In this contribution, we provide an overview of state-of-the-art quality monitoring models and probing technologies, and highlight the major challenges ISPs have to face when they want to ensure high service quality for their customers
QoE-Centric Control and Management of Multimedia Services in Software Defined and Virtualized Networks
Multimedia services consumption has increased tremendously since the deployment of 4G/LTE networks. Mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices are expected to continue to grow with the emergence and evolution of future networks such as 5G. The end user’s demand for services with better quality from service providers has triggered a trend towards Quality of Experience (QoE) - centric network management through efficient utilization of network resources. However, existing network technologies are either unable to adapt to diverse changing network conditions or limited in available resources.
This has posed challenges to service providers for provisioning of QoE-centric multimedia services. New networking solutions such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can provide better solutions in terms of
QoE control and management of multimedia services in emerging and future networks. The features of SDN, such as adaptability, programmability and cost-effectiveness make it suitable for bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications such as live video streaming, 3D/HD video and video gaming. However, the delivery of multimedia services over SDN/NFV networks to achieve optimized QoE, and the overall QoE-centric network resource management remain an open question especially in the advent development of future softwarized networks.
The work in this thesis intends to investigate, design and develop novel approaches for QoE-centric control and management of multimedia services (with a focus on video streaming services) over software defined and virtualized networks.
First, a video quality management scheme based on the traffic intensity under Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP (DASH) using SDN is developed. The proposed scheme can mitigate virtual port queue congestion which may cause
buffering or stalling events during video streaming, thus, reducing the video quality.
A QoE-driven resource allocation mechanism is designed and developed for improving the end user’s QoE for video streaming services. The aim of this approach is to find the best combination of network node functions that can provide an optimized QoE level to end-users through network node cooperation. Furthermore, a novel QoE-centric management scheme is proposed and developed, which utilizes Multipath TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) to enhance QoE for video streaming services over SDN/NFV-based networks. The goal of this strategy is to enable service providers to route network traffic through multiple
disjointed bandwidth-satisfying paths and meet specific service QoE guarantees to the end-users. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed schemes in this work improve the video quality significantly compared with the state-of-the-
art approaches. The thesis further proposes the path protections and link failure-free MPTCP/SR-based architecture that increases survivability, resilience, availability and robustness of future networks. The proposed path protection and dynamic link recovery scheme achieves a minimum time to recover from a failed link and avoids link congestion in softwarized networks
On the Deployment of Healthcare Applications over Fog Computing Infrastructure
Fog computing is considered as the most promising enhancement of the traditional cloud computing paradigm in order to handle potential issues introduced by the emerging Interned of Things (IoT) framework at the network edge. The heterogeneous nature, the extensive distribution and the hefty number of deployed IoT nodes will disrupt existing functional models, creating confusion. However, IoT will facilitate the rise of new applications, with automated healthcare monitoring platforms being amongst them. This paper presents the pillars of design for such applications, along with the evaluation of a working prototype that collects ECG traces from a tailor-made device and utilizes the patient's smartphone as a Fog gateway for securely sharing them to other authorized entities. This prototype will allow patients to share information to their physicians, monitor their health status independently and notify the authorities rapidly in emergency situations. Historical data will also be available for further analysis, towards identifying patterns that may improve medical diagnoses in the foreseeable future
5G Network Slicing using SDN and NFV: A Survey of Taxonomy, Architectures and Future Challenges
In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review and updated solutions
related to 5G network slicing using SDN and NFV. Firstly, we present 5G service
quality and business requirements followed by a description of 5G network
softwarization and slicing paradigms including essential concepts, history and
different use cases. Secondly, we provide a tutorial of 5G network slicing
technology enablers including SDN, NFV, MEC, cloud/Fog computing, network
hypervisors, virtual machines & containers. Thidly, we comprehensively survey
different industrial initiatives and projects that are pushing forward the
adoption of SDN and NFV in accelerating 5G network slicing. A comparison of
various 5G architectural approaches in terms of practical implementations,
technology adoptions and deployment strategies is presented. Moreover, we
provide a discussion on various open source orchestrators and proof of concepts
representing industrial contribution. The work also investigates the
standardization efforts in 5G networks regarding network slicing and
softwarization. Additionally, the article presents the management and
orchestration of network slices in a single domain followed by a comprehensive
survey of management and orchestration approaches in 5G network slicing across
multiple domains while supporting multiple tenants. Furthermore, we highlight
the future challenges and research directions regarding network softwarization
and slicing using SDN and NFV in 5G networks.Comment: 40 Pages, 22 figures, published in computer networks (Open Access
Configuração automática de plataforma de gestão de desempenho em ambientes NFV e SDN
Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaWith 5G set to arrive within the next three years, this next-generation
of mobile networks will transform the mobile industry with a profound
impact both on its customers as well as on the existing technologies
and network architectures. Software-Defined Networking (SDN), together
with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), are going to play
key roles for the operators as they prepare the migration from 4G to
5G allowing them to quickly scale their networks. This dissertation will
present a research work done on this new paradigm of virtualized and
programmable networks focusing on the performance management, supervision
and monitoring domains, aiming to address Self-Organizing
Networks (SON) scenarios in a NFV/SDN context, with one of the scenarios
being the detection and prediction of potential network and service
anomalies. The research work itself was done while participating in
a R&D project designated SELFNET (A Framework for Self-Organized
Network Management in Virtualized and Software Defined Networks)
funded by the European Commission under the H2020 5G-PPP programme,
with Altice Labs being one of the participating partners of
this project. Performance management system advancements in a 5G
scenario require aggregation, correlation and analysis of data gathered
from these virtualized and programmable network elements. Both opensource
monitoring tools and customized catalog-driven tools were either
integrated on or developed with this purpose, and the results show
that they were able to successfully address these requirements of the
SELFNET project. Current performance management platforms of the
network operators in production are designed for non virtualized (non-
NFV) and non programmable (non-SDN) networks, and the knowledge
gathered while doing this research work allowed Altice Labs to understand
how its Altaia performance management platform must evolve in
order to be prepared for the upcoming 5G next generation mobile networks.Com o 5G prestes a chegar nos próximos três anos, esta próxima geração
de redes móveis irá transformar a indústria de telecomunicações
móveis com um impacto profundo nos seus clientes assim como nas
tecnologias e arquiteturas de redes. As redes programáveis (SDN),
em conjunto com a virtualização de funções de rede (NFV), irão desempenhar
papéis vitais para as operadoras na sua migração do 4G
para o 5G, permitindo-as escalar as suas redes rapidamente. Esta
dissertação irá apresentar um trabalho de investigação realizado sobre
este novo paradigma de virtualização e programação de redes,
concentrando-se no domínio da gestão de desempenho, supervisionamento
e monitoria, abordando cenários de redes auto-organizadas
(SON) num contexto NFV/SDN, sendo um destes cenários a deteção
e predição de potenciais anomalias de redes e serviços. O trabalho de
investigação foi enquadrado num projeto de I&D designado SELFNET
(A Framework for Self-Organized Network Management in Virtualized
and Software Defined Networks) financiado pela Comissão Europeia
no âmbito do programa H2020 5G-PPP, sendo a Altice Labs um dos
parceiros participantes deste projeto. Avanços em sistemas de gestão
de desempenho em cenários 5G requerem agregação, correlação e
análise de dados recolhidos destes elementos de rede programáveis
e virtualizados. Ferramentas de monitoria open-source e ferramentas
catalog-driven foram integradas ou desenvolvidas com este propósito,
e os resultados mostram que estas preencheram os requisitos do projeto
SELFNET com sucesso. As plataformas de gestão de desempenho
das operadoras de rede atualmente em produção estão concebidas
para redes não virtualizadas (non-NFV) e não programáveis (non-
SDN), e o conhecimento adquirido durante este trabalho de investigação
permitiu à Altice Labs compreender como a sua plataforma de gestão
de desempenho (Altaia) terá que evoluir por forma a preparar-se
para a próxima geração de redes móveis 5G
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